Having thought about this potential explanation before, I was more readily on board with it being true than Tomar, who I hadn’t told about this theory yet. After all, it seemed the least likely to me.

‘Hold up! What is he talking about? You created the world? Like everything?’

“That’s right. At least for the most part,” Gallas responded in my stead.

As crazy as it seemed that I was supposed to be the one behind it, I knew very early on that someone had to have had an active hand in creating this world. Back in my old life, I didn’t believe in all-powerful, divine beings, and I could picture a world developing from simple organisms to something much more complex, but integrating a programming language invented on Earth into the very fabric of existence, so that it would work on every living entity, was almost certainly not something nature could do. Not to mention the very clearly roleplaying-game-inspired Callings and monsters, or the water sources someone had placed everywhere, as a presumed workaround for the missing natural water.

Despite all of this making logical sense in my head, this was one of the rare moments I felt overwhelmed. There were just too many questions. And too many implications. I didn’t know where to even start unpacking this. Tomar used this opportunity to ask questions instead.

‘What does that mean? Is he a god?’

“No, he’s an architect. A builder of worlds, where souls are able to live out their many lives. He created the basis for everything around us, the original gods, and brought everything on its way to develop into a place for humans to thrive.”

For the most part... Many lives... Original gods...

‘So... He’s stronger than you?’

“This world isn’t about being strong, it’s about your understanding of the system. I suspect that if he had his memories, he could do whatever he wanted here. Mas— Miles, do you remember anything at all? Of the Outer Realm? About what you did before coming here?”

“I don’t...”

This feels weird. Why can’t I... think properly? Am I... Is all this too much?

“That is unfortunate,” Gallas said. “But you have accomplished so much already, in such a short amount of time! You’re halfway there to becoming an administrator, and you’re standing up to the moderators! I came here to warn you though. The others have taken notice of you, the awakened humans, and the healer. They will send all the mods they can muster your way.”

‘That’s just great... As if Arax wasn’t enough.’

“What? You’ve met Arax!?” Gallas was visibly shocked. “Oh no, did she learn any scripts from you?”

“No. We don’t intend to give her anything.”

He let out a relieved sigh. “Under no circumstances can she be allowed to become a scripter. She is too strong already.”

“Didn’t you just say it’s not about being strong?” The words left my mouth, but I hadn’t intended to say them. It was as if my brain had checked out and the autopilot activated.

“I’ll admit, it’s more nuanced than that when it comes to monsters. Just know that you should never teach any of them about Omega. If someone like her got that power, she might destroy this world.”

‘Why don’t you do something about the beasts then!?’

“We’re not allowed to, as per the protocol set up by you. Master,” Gallas said, gesturing at me and bowing his head slightly.

If I was the one who made these decisions, I could naturally think of reasons for making them. “I would have wanted nature to take its course...” I said. “I would have given both sides a fighting chance, but the rest would have been up to the inhabitants of this world. And assuming I needed gods... I would have handicapped them, so they couldn’t interfere too much.”

“That is correct.”

“The real question then is... Why the fuck do humans not have a fighting chance? If this story is true, something is very wrong here!” I said angrily.

Despite their Callings, humans were just scraping by in this world. Even here in Alarna, the situation had been far from ideal, and it was lauded as the best place to live in. Either I had made a mistake, or something had gone wrong somewhere.

Gallas seemed distraught. “That is also correct, Master. For the first few decades, the plans you set in motion played out as they should—despite some minor hurdles. The major turning point came when the humans started abusing the system in ways we hadn’t anticipated, some of them becoming a danger to the entire world. It was decided to use loopholes in the protocol to control the magic users to a degree. But the others went too far... To a point where they didn’t want to let anyone learn about magic or Omega anymore, and I had no choice but to accept their decisions. I’m ashamed to admit that I couldn’t do anything about it. The ascended humans were more powerful than us, and they weren’t bound by the protocol to the same degree.”

He had left out an explanation for what “ascended humans” were, but the moment he mentioned me being on track to becoming an administrator, I understood the concept. I had always been fascinated with the idea that humans may become god-like, but still vulnerable, creatures, instead of there simply being all-powerful gods. And I would have most definitely tried to implement that idea if I was in control of a world.

“That’s the large issue this world is facing,” he continued, “and it’s also the reason why it could never reach its full potential. Why your vision for it couldn’t come to pass. Humanity was crippled and the monsters took over. But now that you’re back, you can make things right!”

Funnily enough, this was exactly what we were trying to do. We were trying to fix this seemingly broken world, improve the lives of the people and potentially even the beasts, create natural magic users, and turn it all into what I thought it was originally supposed to be: an adventure fantasy world, like from a novel or game. There was a slight problem, however.

“You want me to fix things, which is fair enough if I pushed something to production that wasn’t ready for it... But how do you propose I do that? We have Arax breathing down our neck. You’re telling us an army of moderators is coming. And assuming we survive all that... What then? Are the gods coming for us directly? Whatever I was before, I’m kind of human right now.”

“Don’t worry, things will fall into place naturally if we just correct the course this world is on. The woman. She became a healer, right? It’s the first magic Calling in over two thousand years, but now that she exists, the respective sub-system was re-activated. This will have devastating effects in the short-term, but once things settle down, Erinn will be back on track. All you have to do is make sure she survives!”

“Wait, what ‘devastating effects?’ You said before that we did something we shouldn’t have done, what does that mean?”

Gallas thought for a moment, choosing his words carefully. “The magic system... It has some problems when it starts up. I’m sure it’s nothing but a small issue somewhere that could be fixed easily.”

I felt like he was trying not to critique my work, but this was not helpful.

“Tell me what the actual problems are!”

“Very well, I—” he started, before vanishing mid-sentence, in the blink of an eye, just like before.

“Seriously?” I said, exasperated.

Rotating on the spot, I checked to see if he was actually gone, but we were all alone in the cell.

‘He said we don’t have a lot of time...’

“Right...”

Still in a daze, I just stood there, rooted to the ground, staring at the now empty space Gallas had occupied. I didn’t know what to do with the information we got, nor what our next step should be. This had really thrown me for a loop.

‘Do you think all that was true?’

“I mean, at the very least it makes logical sense. I can’t think of any other reason for this sequence of events.”

‘The weirdness aside... This doesn’t change our immediate plans, right?’

While I was somewhat out of it, Tomar seemed rather astute and focused, as if he was speaking my thoughts.

“I suppose not. We still need to deal with Arax... We were aware of the moderators... And of course we want to keep Shadi alive... I don’t know what we’re going to do about potentially having to deal with gods, but... You’re right. This doesn’t change anything for now.”

The one related question mark were these side-effects of activating the magic system that Gallas mentioned. Though that sentence alone brought a ton of other implications and questions with it.

If the magic system had been deactivated while there were no magic users, what exactly had we been doing all these weeks? He mentioned a general “system” that one needed to have control over to become powerful in this world. Was that perhaps the general purpose application of Omega? After all, the way Shadi used scripts looked very different from how we did it. In practical terms, this presumably meant that we were accessing the system directly, while people with the Sourcerer Calling went through a sub-system that made this easier. What we did required an understanding of Omega, and we were writing the scripts by hand. She, on the other hand, just made these “divine scripts” appear out of thin air, and by her own account, she did not understand them in that format.

Of course this approach made a lot of sense to me. All of this felt very much like something I might have come up with—like a project from ten years ago that I just forgot about. If only the memories would come back to me, like they usually did when I was confronted with such a situation.